Re: GUI was Re: why Ada is so unpopular ?

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Therein, of course, lies the dillema. You can have a GUI that gets you 
all the features of an underlying OS or you can have a portable GUI that 
leaves out some capabilities that may be available on a given platform. 
You win some and you lose some.

Still, a *portable* GUI could conceivably go off and become its own 
thing - having features you don't get on any of the underlying 
platforms. Starting with something like CLAW might be a viable way to 
go. File off the Windows specifics and make an implementation that runs 
on X-Windows as well. Then start building from there to create a GUI 
that might be distinctively "Ada".

It might not be easy, but if Ada were to adopt a goal of having a 
portable GUI/Library via reference implementation I think it would be 
achievable and worth the effort in the sense that it would serve to make 
Ada more useful & more attractive to developers. CLAW might be a good 
starting point for that - if we could get some general consensus to go 
that way.

MDC


Randy Brukardt wrote:
> 
> Something like it, with the Windows-specific stuff filed off, would make a
> very decent basis for a higher-level, portable GUI library. We've looked at
> doing that for the sockets portion, and it isn't too hard. It would be
> harder, of course, to do it for the rest of it, but by no means impossible.
> 
>                    Randy.
> 
> 
> 


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